The Passover Hag­gadah: A Biography

“And you shall tell your son on that day….” This sim­ple com­mand in Exo­dus has led to more than five thou­sand ver­sions of the Passover sto­ry. Ochs recounts its life begin­ning with var­i­ous men­tions in the Bible and end­ing with the pro­fu­sion of Hag­gadot today; these vari­a­tions reflect the geo­graph­i­cal spread of Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties, the diver­si­ty of prac­tice, and his­toric events. For any­one inter­est­ed in the emer­gence and com­plex evo­lu­tion of the Hag­gadah, this biog­ra­phy offers a trove of infor­ma­tion in engag­ing and invit­ing language.

The Essen­tial Seder: A Con­tem­po­rary Haggadah

The Hag­gadah is com­piled by Deb­o­rah Gross-Zuch­man, a painter whose col­or­ful illus­tra­tions enliv­en the text; Gross-Zuchman’s Hag­gadah is framed as a short and mean­ing­ful seder, with fresh lan­guage and a con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ty that empha­sizes social jus­tice. It fol­lows the order of the seder and the bless­ings and oth­er famil­iar sec­tions are in Hebrew with Eng­lish translit­er­a­tion, the body of the text is in Eng­lish. Dis­cus­sion, prompt­ed by ques­tions about free­dom and jus­tice, is the din­ner table con­ver­sa­tion. For those brought up on the tra­di­tion­al text, the updat­ed lan­guage may be a a fruit­ful change, or a bit dis­ori­ent­ing. The Four Chil­dren, for exam­ple, are cast as dif­fer­ent aspects of our inner selves; the Magid is a notable depar­ture, cen­tered on Moses, who does not appear in the tra­di­tion­al telling.

The Promise of the Land: A Passover Haggadah

Not every Hag­gadah comes with an endorse­ment by the envi­ron­men­tal­ist Bill McK­ibben, but this edi­tion cel­e­brates the nat­ur­al world and its sig­nif­i­cance in our lives as we come togeth­er to cel­e­brate Passover. It is intend­ed for both knowl­edge­able and unfa­mil­iar par­tic­i­pants. The tra­di­tion­al text, large­ly in Eng­lish, is print­ed in green; eco­log­i­cal com­men­tary, con­text, and side­bars, empha­siz­ing nature and the land, are print­ed in black and are intend­ed to encour­age dis­cus­sion. An inter­est­ing inclu­sion in this Hag­gadah are the last two vers­es of the Magid (Deuteron­o­my 26:9 – 10), omit­ted in the tra­di­tion­al text: ​“Adonai…gave us this land,” a sig­nif­i­cant mes­sage for this eco­log­i­cal retelling. In a brief dis­cus­sion the author explores the rea­sons for the omis­sion and the impor­tance of their inclu­sion here. The illus­tra­tions by Galia Good­man enrich the texts.

The Koren Youth Haggadah

This love­ly Hag­gadah from Israel beau­ti­ful­ly ful­fills the com­mand, ​“And you shall tell your child on that day…” Edu­ca­tion­al in the finest sense of the word, on each page the Hag­gadah has the Hebrew text and an age-appro­pri­ate trans­la­tion; a live­ly full-col­or illus­tra­tion; an instruc­tion to explain what is hap­pen­ing; an activ­i­ty; an idea or quo­ta­tion to reflect on; and a ques­tion for dis­cus­sion. Along the bot­tom of each page is a nav­i­ga­tion bar indi­cat­ing where the read­ers are in the ser­vice. A Par­ent and Edu­ca­tor Com­pan­ion is avail­able on the publisher’s web­site; it not only takes the leader through the Hag­gadah page by page, expand­ing the expla­na­tions and sug­gest­ing answers to the many ques­tions the Hag­gadah pos­es, but also explains many of the illus­tra­tive and icon­ic ele­ments. Even with all the activ­i­ty on each dou­ble-page spread, the Hag­gadah is very well designed, and the pages are open and inviting.

The Passover Hag­gadah: An Ancient Sto­ry for Mod­ern Times

The sub­ti­tle describes this Hag­gadah per­fect­ly. It is the most tra­di­tion­al of the Hag­gadot reviewed here — the com­plete Hebrew text, both trans­lat­ed and translit­er­at­ed — with a thought­ful and wide-rang­ing intro­duc­tion and three reflec­tive essays. And all this served up with the Tablet edge — tra­di­tion laced with ques­tion­ing, sly humor, and an ultra-con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ty. A good exam­ple is the seder plate, illus­trat­ed with a clas­sic set­ting accom­pa­nied by a bar along the bot­tom of the page sug­gest­ing six pos­si­ble addi­tions rep­re­sent­ing every­thing from the just-about- tra­di­tion­al orange to a pine cone for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. There are four daugh­ters to com­ple­ment the four sons (three of whom are old enough to sport a mus­tache). If a leader finds the text lag­ging a lit­tle, there are occa­sion­al alerts on how to skip ahead or try a diversion.

The Lom­bard Haggadah

The Lom­bard Hag­gadah takes its place in the col­lec­tion of out­stand­ing fac­sim­i­les of rare medieval Hag­gadot. The first stand-alone Ital­ian Hag­gadah — one that is not part of a sid­dur — it dates to the four­teenth cen­tu­ry. Repro­duced in a hand­some large-for­mat vol­ume for study and appre­ci­a­tion, it includes essays by lead­ing schol­ars on Jew­ish life in Lom­bardy, the artis­tic sources and inspi­ra­tion of the Hag­gadah, and the mean­ings and ambi­gu­i­ties in the illus­tra­tion. For the lay read­er the del­i­cate­ly beau­ti­ful art, appear­ing on almost all of the sev­en­ty-five pages, are reward enough, show­ing the dress, envi­ron­ment, house­hold life of the Jew­ish Lom­bard com­mu­ni­ty, and influ­ence of Chris­t­ian art. The entire Hag­gadah is repro­duced in the clos­ing sec­tion; in addi­tion to the seder, the vol­ume includes a few sto­ries from Gen­e­sis and Exo­dus, and a cat­a­logue of month­ly labors akin to a book of days.